


Kismet

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Discussion of het relationships including marriage, M/M, Polyamorous Character, Sex, what goes around comes around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 20:05:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16456382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: Sav and Joe are together now. Or are they? This is not what Sav had in mind when he gave his body and his heart.Directly follows "Inevitable".





	Kismet

**Author's Note:**

> Being in love doesn't mean you can be together like you want to. Nor does it mean you can't be in love with someone(s) else simultaneously ~polyamory. Sav is Joe's one true love. But Joe is also practical. Sav, on the other hand, cannot wrap his head around the sort of arrangement Joe requires of him. Not because Sav is 'the girl'... Because Sav is like most people in his ideas of 'a relationship'. /soapbox. 
> 
> This fic was originally titled 'Misery'. Sometimes a writer just needs to make the characters suffer. Sorry (not sorry). 
> 
> RL Sav was married already for 4 years in '08 - more than aware. 
> 
> The characters in this fictional nonsense resemble their namesakes but have nothing to do with the real members of Def Leppard. No disrespect is intended, only the greatest of admiration.
> 
> FAST = Face, Arms, Speech, Time, used to assess for signs of stroke. Sav bringing it up meant his Bell's Palsy was acting up, and that people have tried the FAST assessment on him before.
> 
> Beta by ChristianHowe. Any remaining errors are mine.

-2008  


 

Two figures curled around each other in a bed. The scent of their mating still permeated the place, thick as pea soup fog and melted wax. A few minutes of afterglow, during which they'd stopped watching themselves make each other come in front of that mirror and stumbled over to get horizontal. Delayed kisses, an odd caress or two, body held to body. Blond hair flung everywhere across the pillows, long limbs and slightly less than hard, flat anything, two middle-aged men enjoying the fruits of their success. 

Enjoying, if it weren't so complicated. If enjoyment weren't relative. 

 

Between kisses, Joe asked mildly, "Did I tell you I'm getting married? I think you should, too." 

Later, Sav would remember his impression of them still shining with the sweat of their reunion when Joe dropped that on him. Bombshell. Ka-boom. "How...?!" he boggled. 

"Well, you go downtown to the municipal building and--" 

"No, I know _how_ ," Sav harrumphed. He tried to draw back but Joe was ready and held on to his shoulder and hip. "Never seen you with a woman lately, or talking on your mobile like..."

Joe shook his head, vaguely amused. "You are sorely lacking in the skill of paying attention, Sav, mate."

"I don't understand. You... It's like you fought to have me." When Joe opened his mouth, Sav spoke over him, "Yes I know how that sounds!" Totally thrown, Sav wrenched away, trying to make sense of it. "You convinced me, okay? We just fucked. _'Consummated our relationship.'_ " No one else could have made it sound so skeevy and distasteful. 

"No, Sav, we did that a long, long time ago." The singer leaned back into the pile of pillows behind him, as if inviting a repeat. 

Rolling his eyes at the undeniable truth, Sav continued, "Now you tell me this?"

Joe's face took on a dangerous narrow-eyed expression that said he'd thought about it for a very long time and wouldn't budge. "It's for our own protection. Find yourself a nice bird to set up house with, so you'll always have somewhere to go in case... well, more like, when things get too intense."

"Wot? No! That's like... lying. Outright."

"Maybe you'll even want kids some day."

Downturned mouth and skin gone pale, Sav looked like he'd be sick and shook his head emphatically.

"Well, I have one on the way..."

"But... but I thought... mumps?" This had been Joe's part of the Curse, that and his voice's deterioration after they finished the Slang tour. Some days he was almost fine; others he could barely croak. A lead vocalist who couldn't sing, a one-armed drummer, a dead legend. They'd got through everything so far. This shite, though, this was self-inflicted. 

"We all thought. Turns out that's wrong. I'll have paternity tests done after it's born, of course, but... I guess one of my little swimmers found a mark."

Limp didn't even begin to cover the state of Sav's body and mind. He got out of bed and walked away. Not far, only as far as the suitcase he'd never unpacked. Been here for weeks and the closet and dresser remained empty. Eyes like lasers followed his every move, he could feel them. First, he put on pants, thin black briefs. When he turned back around to do battle, damned right he stood there in his underwear, feet far apart as if he were on stage. Distraction was a powerful weapon. 

He wasn't even given a chance to open his mouth when Joe resumed, "Think about it, Sav. But not for too long. This is how it's gotta be. We're not in our twenties anymore, chalking it up to youthful experimentation."

"When we were that age, we'd have been castrated by the media - not to mention the fans - if they'd got wind of it," argued Sav, lip curled, looking down at the man who'd claimed him. His choice of verb was deliberate, as was the angle at which he stood from Joe, to flaunt how he was intact in every way. One vibe he'd never got from Joe was that he was a stand-in for a bird. No, the frontman was attracted to every trait that pronounced him a man: his height, his voice, his musculature, and certainly his balls -- both physical and cerebral. "Things are different now... in more and more countries, two blokes can marry each other." Joe raised an eyebrow, prompting Sav to hurry on, "I'm not into marriage, though. With anyone. All it means is alimony."

"Hello, prenup! C'mon, they have professional matchmakers and so forth. Very discreet."

"No! People should be deeply in love..." There was no way in hell that Sav was going to pay someone for the privilege of buying him a wife.

"How's that working out for you, hm?"

This was fucking awful. Sav's eyes drifted closed, though he was anything but relaxed. He had thought this new-old thing would be do-able, livable. So much for balls. He had stood there, let himself be touched and undressed and said vows, that's what it had felt like, vows sealed in fluids to overwrite the past. With each word, he had surrendered. The return was going to be... a portion. Partial. It might as well be nothing. 

But be damned if he was going to be the side piece, or go sneaking around. "Why don't we just take a short holiday to the Netherlands and... and get married, if you need that so much." The words had jumped from Sav's tongue with no interference from his brain. He couldn't believe his own burning ears. "I don't care if you have kids with someone else."

Joe's dimple flashed. "Did you just propose to me, Sav? That's so sweet. But no. Like I told you, other plans."

"Well then, fuck you." Sav could make a stand, too.

"Well then, get the fuck out of my house." 

"Recording's not finished," argued Sav, as if that made any difference in the digital age.

"There's hotels not far from here. It's that, or you're fired." Sav blinked as Joe's backlash hit him. "Besides the long face, the rest of us are tired of you phoning it in on stage. Strutting around in leather and tossing your hair isn't enough. Fucking learn to practice. Look at Viv, he never stops messing around with new techniques, and Phil, I think he sleeps with his guitars or summat."

Never in 30 years had anyone dealt him such harsh criticism, not ex-fans who called them sell-outs, not Pete drunk on his worst Scotch bender, not Mutt repeating, "Again" tonelessly for the thousandth time. Joe had hit a raw nerve in the way only a person who claims to love you can. "Why am I listening to this?"

"Because you know I'm right. Now get over here, we're not done yet. And if you think you can just lay on your back and close your eyes, think again."

Oh yes, the sheet carelessly draped over Joe's lap was a tent now, Sav could see that. He couldn't believe his own body's response, a rising heft stretching his pants into an obscene caricature. "I'm used to being on top," he grunted. "So I think that means it's you on your back or your knees this time." 

"Now that's more like it," leered Joe. 

Lube was hidden in his luggage, left over from... Sav refused to think about it. Grabbing the bottle, he climbed into bed and rolled Joe over. Even on his knees in the supposedly submissive position, everything was about what Joe wanted, and how he wanted it. If he'd thought they'd fuck quick and dirty, Sav had thought wrong again, and frankly, he was tired of always being wrong. 

So he gave himself slow. He took the time to trail his hands everywhere, no reservations, just as loving as Joe had been with him, standing up. He made it his final argument, delivered without a word. 

The grind was barely that, just a continuous syrupy push-pull. Sav made sure that Joe was lavished with touch, that which he knew the singer had craved from him for so damned long. Sav held not just his hips, but also Joe's shoulders, licking freckles. He found, tweaked, stroked and fondled a multitude of hot spots, expected and not: nipples, sure; but also the insides of Joe's elbows; his calves; his nape where the little downy hairs started; and the belly he'd grown, comforting himself. For almost an hour, Sav used every trick he'd ever learned till the moans his mouth and hands pulled forth and his dick punched from Joe's throat rose loud enough to hear in the next county. Their movements flowed into a towering crest of delayed release.

In the end, Joe's running litany of his name with "love" and "yes" made Sav shake with a bewildering mix of barely suppressed fury and the lingering overflow of his feelings set free earlier, as impossible to cage as the endorphins that microburst in every synapse. As people might say in many variations -- as had they, themselves -- love and hate were two sides of the same coin and the opposite was in fact indifference. 

Hearing Joe whining the precursors of orgasm, spasms fluttering around him, Sav at last unleashed the words that had been ping-ponging around in his head, low and gritty. "This is what you can have, every day for the rest of our lives. I said I'd give you my body, my heart, everything. And what do you wanna do now...? Piss on it all." 

"Nooooo!" Joe howled. From behind and above his back, Sav could see a mess of sticky white streaks fly everywhere. He managed to hold off so he could massage the oversensitive spot inside into a further release, and then pulled out. 

He hadn't come. 

He wouldn't. 

He'd thought. 

Except, when Joe weaseled around and laid his hands on him, locked that unfaded passionate stare on him, Sav cried out in pain. He used the fingers stroking him beyond his limits of control, to the edge, and exploded between them. 

"You just don't get it, do you? This doesn't make me love you less... on the contrary, if we can make it work, it means I'll love you more." Joe looked deep into Sav's eyes, still holding his dick in one hand, heart in the other, the intense stare willing him to believe. "Time to grow up, princess. I'm real. This is real. Your idea of how to solidify it is to make it official in the eyes of the law...? We're a law unto ourselves, Sav. Beyond papers, beyond wives, or even Leppard. You and me. That's all." 

Sav shook his head, but he let himself be held through the night.

And so it went. 

_Two months later..._

The short civil ceremony was witnessed by a handful of family and intimate friends. The bride wore white over her baby bump and Sav tried not to turn other less-desirable colours; green and purple were not part of the wedding's theme. He was having a bad face day anyway; hiding behind his hair, he kept his drooping features pointed down. No need for some well-meaning prat to try the FAST assessment on him as part of the festivities. 

He'd stayed at the lavish reception long enough to toast the happy couple, and stumbled out into the evening murk. No one stopped him.

And now, Sav was on his way back to Sheffield. He'd hired a private charter. Fuck the expense, he had no patience remaining for airport security checks and long car rides.

The last few weeks had spared him little time to think. Finishing the album, planning a wedding -- god help him! -- and now he just wanted solitude and some clarity. 

Or did he. 

During the flight, Sav had turned his powered-down mobile over and over in his hands. When the wheels touched down, he pushed the button, and waited through the start-up sequence. 

One ring, two. "Hello, luv." 

 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> No, not telling.


End file.
